


how fragile we are

by EmmaArthur (EchoBleu)



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Asexual Isobel Evans, Autistic Character, Autistic Michael Guerin, Childhood, Depressed Max Evans, Depression, Dissociation, Gen, Genderqueer Character, Genderqueer Isobel Evans, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Pod Squad (Roswell), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, neurodivergence, neurodivergent character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26290120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoBleu/pseuds/EmmaArthur
Summary: Being raised by humans doesn't make Isobel, Max and Michael human. Or maybe it does. Maybe it makes them too human.
Relationships: Isabel Evans & Max Evans & Michael Guerin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	how fragile we are

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this ages ago as an exploration of (neuro)queerness in the pod squad. It's meant to have at least two more parts, though I don't know if I'll ever write them, but it's been sitting on my computer for too long.
> 
> At some point I meant to make it a prequel to [our hands clasped so tight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23467954), so if I ever finish the later chapters I'll link it back to the series.

**1.**

Michael doesn't start speaking for nearly two years after they come out of the pods. Maybe it's because he doesn't have anyone to talk to.

Isobel and Max used to communicate with him telepathically, but once they're gone he doesn't have anyone else. They have each other, and parents who try to encourage them to come out of their shell, so they both say their first words just weeks after they find a home.

Michael doesn't have a home. He doesn't need to  speak , since no one would listen to him anyway.

At the group home, he's labeled a problem child nearly from the first day, and it's the kind of label that sticks to you like a used band-aid, gluing itself to whatever finger you try to use to get rid of it.

So instead of talking, he draws. He draws on any surface adults let him have access to. He draws the shiny lights that are his only memory of wherever he was before, over and over. Circle, line, line, circle. Back to the middle. Line, circle.

One day, one of the ladies, the one who likes him a little and even talks to him sometimes, takes his hand and shows him how to draw something else.

M ichael learns to write before he learns to talk, but it's a long time before he has anything to write about.

Iz is so jealous of Max sometimes. On days like today, looking in the mirror, she hates herself. She hates the way her body is changing, the budding breasts she doesn't want, the dresses her mother still makes her wear. Max doesn't have all that. Max even has a good name, a name that doesn't say _girl_ or _boy_ to anyone who hears it. Iz hates her name, she never wants to hear it again. She told Max and he calls her Iz, now, and she likes that a little more. But their parents never do.

Cutting her hair short didn't help, and now everyone looks at her weird. Maybe because she did it in the bathroom mirror, with the kitchen scissors, and why did no one tell her why the hairdresser wets it first? It  _hurt_ . Her hair look ed all wonky  afterwards, and Mom dragged her to the salon to make it better.  Iz screamed for two hours straight.

She steals one of Max's baseball caps and puts it on her head. He has at least three of them anyway, and he doesn't mind her stealing his clothes. It's always Mom and Dad who mind it.

The hat makes it a little better. She can look in the mirror without w anting to slash at her body with a knife .

She doesn't remove it for three years.

Max sits on a low wall at the edge of the playground, watching the other boys kick a ball around. It's never been his thing. He likes to read, and write, but none of the other kids enjoy that.  So he just sits alone, most of the time.

He can feel I z watching him. Sometimes he even gets a flash of himself through her eyes. The teachers keep saying that they're too fusional, that they'll never make friends if they stay together, so they switched I z to another class and now they 're not even  allowed to sit together.

Max isn't good at making friends. It's like the other kids know he's different. Iz and him tried to figure it out so many times, where they come from, why they don't feel like they're from the same planet, but they don't understand.

Maybe it's because they aren't.

They're eleven and five months when they're reunited. Iz is the one who sees him first, the boy whose name they don't even remember now, the boy with curly hair and a special place inside their minds. He's beautiful, so beautiful, because he's here. They've missed him so much.

Michael hugs them tight like he never wants to let them go, and he refuses to say where he's been. He has scars on his arms and he never wears shorts. He's sad, sadder even than Max, sadder than Iz feels inside.

But together, they can be happy. They can be strong.

They're just one day short of twelve−their birthday has been set at the day they were found in the desert−when they find the pods again. When they find proof that they're not from around here.

It's almost a relief. It explains a lot. And yet nothing. They're a mystery.

They're aliens.

They don't know what it means. Can they live a normal life? Are they all alone? Will someone come for them, someday?

**2.**

Michael wonders often, if someone will come for him.

He's fourteen, and he's just escaped, barely, from another exorcism, when he figures out that no other aliens will come to bring him home. When someone comes for him, it will be a human, and it will be to torture him, kill him, dissect him. From there on, he lives with that thought at the back of his mind. It will happen, someday. It only takes a single misstep. They almost made one, _that night._

Maybe when the humans catch him, he'll find out that he deserved it all along. That his race is really one of monsters. Except by now he's f airly sure  there can be  no  worse monsters than humans.

But at least he's found Max and Isobel again, and they're okay. They're better than okay, they're thriving. At least from Michael's point of view, at least until recently− _that night_ changed things.

He buries the jealousy deep inside him, until it's almost gone. When he can get away with it, he hitches a ride to the desert, out to the turquoise mines, and he lies there. He no longer waits for someone to come get him. He wishes for the world to disappear, until he's the only one left.

He wishes that he could disappear from the world.

Iz hurts, inside.  Physically, at first, but that doesn't last anywhere near long enough. It's just bruises, right? The man didn't have time to do anything worse.

She should be fine. She _is_ fine. She has to be.

She carries on like nothing happened, at first. As far as anyone else is concerned, that's the truth. She's worried about Max for a while, but his powers seems to settle again after a few days, and he's sad, but he doesn't feel guilty. So she smiles at her parents and sleeps in Max's bed a little more often, where it feels safe. She refuses to go camping with her family, but that's normal, right? Camping sucks, anyway. All of her friends say so.

She doesn't do sleepovers with her friends, either. She just doesn't feel like it. She's pulling away, she knows she is, but it feels like her friends' discussions and worries are so lame, so removed from her reality. She wants to cut her hair short again, but she doesn't want to attract attention. Her parents can't be worried about that, because then they'll be worried about other things, too. Like how much time she spends in her room. Like the nightmares she wakes up from, and how she holds on tight to her dad's hand the one time they get back from dinner at the restaurant and it's already night outside.

The first time it happens is just after school starts again. One of the boys in her class approaches  Iz from behind, and she freezes. She can't move, and for a moment, she can't even feel her body. He looks at her weird and walks away. 

The next time, the PE teacher touches her without warning  and she flinches back so far that she falls on her ass. She freezes for longer this time, and when she comes back to herself, she's crying. The teacher tries to ask her what happens, but she does her best to deflect it. He can't know.

The third time, she loses time. She's sitting at her desk at the beginning of a lesson, and suddenly the other students are standing up and leaving. She doesn't know where she went.

There's something wrong with her.

She's scared.

People are exhausting, Max decides sometime through high school. He's just tired, all the time. After the strange elation that followed _that night_ , his energy levels took a nose dive. These days he has trouble staying awake through a whole day of school.

His parents haven't noticed.  Isobel k nows , but she has her own stuff to deal with. She didn't come back the same from the camping trip. Max worries about her, but he doesn't know how to help.

He lies on his bed, at night, after dinner, and often she joins him. They just lie there, not moving, not talking. That's what most of their relationship boils down to, now.

Michael is angry, pulling away from them, and that just makes Max more tired. He doesn't have the energy to take in more anger, more rage. He has the weight that has settled inside him, the shape of a man standing over Isobel, pinning her down. He has the feeling that never leaves, of a life going out under his hand.

How can he concentrate on homework after that?

That year is when he starts writing for real. He writes and writes, blackens pages and notebooks until his hand hurts, and that's good, because that's the hand that killed a man. Maybe it should hurt.

He burns every notebook the moment he's put down the last word.


End file.
